New Town, Connecticut

I have frequent encounters. These are not ordinary encounters with family or friends, nor are they encounters created by sci-fi movie producers with strange or cute aliens. But they are very real, nonetheless. My encounters are with trees, telephone poles, parking meters, half-open doors, wall corners, and other hard objects. And these meetings are, inevitably, painful to me. One of my least favorite close encounters is with an open dishwasher door. At shin height, it is a painful reminder to stay on task. Another frequent encounter is a telephone pole planted nearly in the center of a curving sidewalk. It is my nemesis. The curve is slight and deceptive, making me feel secure in my distances and trajectories. But, somehow, this telephone pole has a way of sliding slyly into the small space not covered by my cane’s arc. I really don’t know how it does it. But barked knuckles, and several bruised shoulders, are testimony to its skill and my lack of the same. This isn’t about clever, inanimate objects (though, sometimes, their cleverness does test my belief in animism a bit). It is about the results of these encounters. For example, over my right eye, neatly and precisely spaced as if a surgeon placed them, are a series of four scars from a certain bookcase corner. My shins have a nice set of scars and healing scabs from my forgetfulness around dishwashing time. At any time, I have one or more sore spots from a close encounter with some solid object. I’ve never been seriously wounded, just small cuts, abrasions, or bruises; things that sting when in the shower or make me wince when I bump the same place a second time. This makes me think of Columbine. I lived, until first grade, in Denver, and now live no more than two hours from Springfield. These two names, with a handful of others, have taken their places in our consciousness as places of unbelievable terror and horror, of heart-wrenching sadness and tragedy. Listening to the experts telling us what is wrong with our society, how we can identify potential perpetrators of such angry acts, whose fault and where the blame should be placed, activates my cynical side. I fear there is little or no chance of stopping this, no way to identify, to treat, to resolve the issues of these young people. There is something beyond society’s corporate coping working here. I think of the murdered ones and of the ones who wielded the weapons of hate and vengeance. And my heart weeps for both. How intense must the anger and hatred boiling within be to make killing seem an appropriate response to humiliation, neglect, or bullying? But, a part of me understands. No one feels good when belittled or humiliated because of membership status. Some are so fragile they feel the smallest pinprick of slight. Knowing this, hurting them, do I not share, to some small degree, in their pain and ultimate action? Their bruises may be as invisible as the scars and scabs of my pants-covered shins, but just as real. Their emotional bruises are painful to the slightest touch. Repeated wounds bleed with little provocation and fester deeply without a healing touch. Those who do these horrendous things are responsible for their own actions. But, do I not contribute to their anger and hatred when I hurt them. Since I can’t tell who the wounded are, I want to live life so as not to break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering flax -- to live in a way that will heal not hurt, soothe, not scar, bring peace, not pressure. It may be an impossible task, but it does start with me. Perhaps if each of us lived this way, we could prevent one school ground massacre. We could keep another town from being shredded and turned into a media circus, reclaim one more damaged life, remove one more child from the death list. And, perhaps, one road to this utopia is a generous heart. In this “I” generation, descended from the “me” generation, where success is measured in getting, where paranoia and anxiety are whipped to fever pitch by television; where all things are measured in terms of their impact on my well being, my benefit, my pleasure—perhaps giving is one facet of the gem of love that would begin the healing of our society. IN gifting, both giftee and gifter are blessed. One heart is warmed knowing the joy of giving; the other by the thought of another’s care and love. How can hatred anger and murder dwell in a land full of loving giving and with a void of greed? Perhaps, together, we could silence the evening news due to lack of content. Note-This is a revision of an essay originally written in 1999, shortly after the Columbine massacre. It seems especially Germaine following last week’s horrific events both here in Oregon and in Connecticut. It is taken from a forthcoming book of essays reflections on vision and blindness written between 1995 and 2000. These essays were my therapy following loss of vision in 1995.